{"id":15825,"date":"2026-05-12T10:27:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T10:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/12\/could-gold-medalist-nick-baumgartner-be-snowboarding-in-the-olympics-at-52-years-old-nbc-bay-area\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T10:27:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T10:27:20","slug":"could-gold-medalist-nick-baumgartner-be-snowboarding-in-the-olympics-at-52-years-old-nbc-bay-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/12\/could-gold-medalist-nick-baumgartner-be-snowboarding-in-the-olympics-at-52-years-old-nbc-bay-area\/","title":{"rendered":"Could gold medalist Nick Baumgartner be snowboarding in the Olympics at 52 years old? &#8211; NBC Bay Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We talked to snowboarding&#8217;s oldest-ever Olympic gold medalist about being mistaken for a coach, becoming an influencer at 44, and working with DeWalt for Construction Safety Week.<br \/>Nick Baumgartner is the oldest-ever Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding. But what might be even crazier is that he told us he&#8217;s not even thinking about retiring. Here are some highlights from our interview with the athlete who&#8217;s still sometimes mistaken for a coach after he won his first Olympic medal at age 40.<br \/><strong>Q:<\/strong><em> <\/em>In Milan, you actually called out the broadcast for just assuming that this would be your last Olympics?<br \/>Watch NBC Bay Area News free wherever you are<br \/><strong>Nick Baumgartner:<\/strong><em> <\/em>Yeah, &#8220;We heard that this is your last&#8230;&#8221; I was like, &#8220;Are you kidding me? I&#8217;m having the time of my life.&#8221; I was just a kid out there playing with my friends. And I always said, as long as I&#8217;m competitive and I&#8217;m having fun, which go together, I&#8217;m gonna continue to do this as long I can. I think my competitors are like, &#8220;What the&#8230; Dude! What are you&#8230; How?&#8221; I love that.<br \/><strong>Q: <\/strong>So are we looking at 2030, French Alps?<br \/><strong>Nick Baumgartner: <\/strong>We could say 2030, but let&#8217;s be honest. How cool would it be to retire on home soil? 2034 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Is it possible? I don&#8217;t know. Are we gonna find out? Absolutely.<br \/><strong>Q: <\/strong>You&#8217;re 44 now. In what ways are you a better snowboarder now than you were when you started?<br \/><strong>Nick Baumgartner:<\/strong><em> <\/em>I still take risks, yes, but they&#8217;re more calculated now. When we show up to a new track, they get people to test the track. You get like two extra runs on it, so it gives you an advantage, but I&#8217;m not doing that. I&#8217;m not going to do that because I don&#8217;t need to take an unnecessary hit.<\/p>\n<p>Baumgartner loves to talk about safety. And it&#8217;s earned him a sponsorship that couldn&#8217;t be more fitting. He&#8217;s been working with DeWalt to promote Construction Safety Week. Baumgartner is no stranger to power tools, and his work in the trades is a big part of his story.<br \/><strong>Q:<\/strong><em> <\/em>You&#8217;ve referred to yourself as the blue collar Olympian?<br \/><strong>Nick Baumgartner: <\/strong>My dream was to become a professional snowboarder, right? I needed money to chase my dreams. I didn&#8217;t have the finances growing up to be sent to these academies and stuff, so what did I do? I found a job in the union as a concrete laborer. I worked all summer long, got paid more than I probably deserved right off the bat. If there&#8217;s something that you want in your life&#8230; The trades can provide that opportunity.<br \/><strong>Q:<\/strong><em> <\/em>You looked like you were having the time of your life at the Olympics. How did you start doing all the lip sync videos?<br \/><strong>Nick Baumgartner: <\/strong>The goal wasn&#8217;t to become a full-blown influencer at 44, but here we are. And I always joke to my kid, I&#8217;m like, who gave their dad an Instagram account? Everyone&#8217;s sharing my stuff and commenting. It was so amazing (at the 2026 Winter Olympics) to see everyone care about what I was doing.<br \/><strong>Q:<\/strong><em> <\/em>What would you say is the best thing about being at the Olympics as many times as you have?<br \/><strong>Nick Baumgartner: <\/strong>What I enjoy is how many times I get mistaken for a coach. I think that&#8217;s funny. They&#8217;re always like, &#8220;Oh, you must be a coach.&#8221; &#8230; &#8220;Not a coach.&#8221; They&#8217;re like, &#8220;Wait, you&#8217;re still an athlete?&#8221; And we kind of get a chuckle out of it.<br \/><strong>Q: <\/strong>You&#8217;ve referred to your competitors as kids. Do they have names that they call you right back?<br \/><strong>Nick Baumgartner: <\/strong>Yeah, so there&#8217;s one kid who&#8217;s been calling me Grandpa for quite a few years. A lot of them are starting to do that now, but I love it. I couldn&#8217;t be more proud to be the age that I am doing the thing that I&#8217;m doing. It&#8217;s the greatest part about my story.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.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?oc=5\">source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We talked to snowboarding&#8217;s oldest-ever Olympic gold medalist about being mistaken for a coach, becoming an influencer at 44, and working with DeWalt for Construction Safety Week.Nick Baumgartner is the oldest-ever Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding. But what might be even crazier is that he told us he&#8217;s not even thinking about retiring. Here are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15825","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}